Nothing but the Truth (and a Few White Lies)
Justina Chen Headley
For Tyler and Sofia, my hapa kids who are wholly wonderful
1 * Belly-Button Grandmother
While every other freshman is at the Spring Fling tonight, I have a date with an old lady whose thumb is feeling up my belly button.
I turn my head to the side and catch a whiff of mothballs and five-spice powder on Belly-button Grandmothers stained silk tunic and baggy black pants. At this moment, Janie and Laura are dancing in the gym that's been transformed into a tropical paradise for the last all-school dance of the year. Me, I'm stretched out on this plastic-covered sofa with my T-shirt pushed up to my nonexistent chest and my pants pulled down to my boy-straight hips.
"You gonna get in big accident," announces Belly-button Grandmother in her accented English, still choppy after living in Seattle for over fifty years. She smacks her lips tight together, which wrinkles her face even more, so that she looks like a preserved plum. The fortune-teller closes her eyes and her thumb presses deeper into my belly button.
"When you fifteen," she says. A bead of sweat forms on her forehead like she can feel my future pain.
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I muffle a snort, Yeah, right. Considering my life is nothing but school, homework, and Mama, broken with intermittent insult-slinging with my brother, there's hardly any opportunity for me to get in a Big Accident.
"Aiya!" mutters Belly-button Grandmother, on the verge of another dire prediction.
If my mom wanted my future read, why couldn't she have found a tarot reader? I'm sure somewhere in the state of Washington there's a Mandarin-speaking, future-reading tarot lady. Or a palmist who'd gently run her finger across my hand. Someone who would say, My goodness, what a long happy life you're going to have.
But no, my future is being channeled through my belly button.
As soon as Mama heard from The Gossip Lady in our potluck group about Belly-button Grandmother, she packed me up and hauled us both down the freeway. This is my mom, the woman who drives only in a five-mile radius around our home, a whole hour south of Seattle. The woman who has driven on a highway maybe twenty times ever. The same woman who looks at maps the way I look at her Chinese newspapers: unreadable.
Belly-button Grandmother's bone-dry thumb presses harder into my stomach like she wants to dig right through me. If she presses harder, I won't have a future. I wince. She scowls. I would say something profound like, Hey, that hurts! if I wasn't afraid that the old lady was going to change my future.
Belly-button Grandmother sighs like my life is going to be filled with even more disaster than it is now with this Mount Fuji-sized pimple on my chin.
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"You gonna have three children. Too many," she pronounces. For a brief moment, she releases the pressure on my belly and stares down at me with her cavern-dark eyes. "You want me take away one?"
I want to say, Get real. How can I even think about conceiving three kids, much less discuss family planning, when I can't even get a date to my school dance?
Belly-button Grandmother's frown deepens as if she read my insignificant thoughts. Her thumb hovers over my stomach. Quickly, I shake my head. I don't need my mom to translate the look on the fortune-teller's face: Oh, you making a big mistake.
Now I turn my face to the side so I don't have to look at Belly-button Grandmother and her disapproval anymore. Above the couch, white paint is peeling off the wall next to the picture of Buddha, his smooth, flat face serene. I wonder what other predictions he's heard Belly-button Grandmother make and whether he's having himself a good belly laugh about how the closest I've ever gotten to Nirvana is winning a sixth-grade essay contest about why I loved being an American. My field trip to Nirvana was a short one. Steve Kosanko didn't see me as anywhere close to being a true red-white-and-blue American. The day after I won the contest, he cornered me at recess and serenaded me with a round of "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these." As an encore, he held me down in the mud like it was some squelchy rice paddy where my dirty knees belonged.
Another sniff, this time of incense, makes me want to gag. I need to sneeze, but rub my nose hard instead. A sneeze would probably contract my abs, and then, God, my whole life course could be altered.
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What I really want to know, desperately need to know, is whether Mark Scranton, Mr. Hip and Cool at Lincoln High, will ever notice me. Well, technically, he does notice me. I did write his campaign speech, after all. But it's too much to hope that I'll actually get a chance to date him, not with Mama's no-dating-until-college edict (strike one), Mark being a white guy (strike two) and me being a bizarrely tall Freakinstein cobbled together from Asian and white DNA (strike three). I'm out before I've even scooted off the bench.
So a more realistic miracle that I'll take to go, please, is an Honors English essay, one that needs to be started and finished this weekend. The same essay that the rest of the class has worked on for nearly the entire year.
I don't need a miracle, tarot reader, palmist, or even a Belly-button Grandmother to tell me what my mom is doing out in the waiting room. She's praying to Buddha: "Please let my daughter marry a rich Taiwanese doctor." But then, in an act of practicality, she amends her prayer: "A Taiwanese businessman would be acceptable. Acceptable but not ideal."
I would've settled for an acceptable but not ideal date to my Spring Fling.
Belly-button Grandmother yanks her thumb out of my belly button and calls sharply, "Ho Mei-Li!"
The door opens immediately. Mama's face tightens as she peers accusingly at me. Her permed hair is a damp halo around her furrowed brow. She glances at me and speaks in a rapid Mandarin so that I can't follow what they're saying.
I tug my T-shirt down and sit up. Who needs a translator when I see my mother's frown and the shake of her head as Belly-button Grandmother chatters?
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"Be-gok lan?" Mama says, slipping into Taiwanese in her shock.
Belly-button Grandmother nods once, solemnly, even though she doesn't understand Taiwanese. Whatever the language, I have no problems divining what's being predicted here. According to my navel, I am going to end up with a white guy.
Mama glares at me: Oh, you making a big mistake.
I walk to the window overlooking the International District, all crowds of black heads and neon lights. And I'm surprised that I just want to go home. Not out to my favorite Chinese restaurant, not even to the dance, but to my bedroom.
I touch my belly button. Maybe there is magic in there after all.
I know what I'd wish for.
As Mama and Belly-button Grandmother confer about my life, I rub my stomach three times for good luck, just as if I were a gold statue of a big-bellied Buddha.
Then I wish to be white.
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2 * Mama-ese
After we collect my big brother, Abe, who's been poring over Japanese comic books in a manga store, Mama conducts the Chinese Food Census, her preferred method for selecting a restaurant. No studying of menus or trusting food critics for Mama. Instead, she stares into a window -- never mind if she freaks out some poor diner who happens to be eating by said window -- and tallies the number of black-haired heads inside a restaurant.
Her theory is straightforward and accurate: a high black-hair-to-blond ratio equals a good Chinese restaurant. High blond-to-black-hair equals food fit for pigs. I would have said dogs, but some people are under the misconception that all Asian people eat man's best friend. We don't. The only part of a dog I have tasted -- by accident when I laughed while within licking distance of a golden retriever -- was its
slobbery tongue. However, inquiring minds want to know why we don't hear people retching over the Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer-eating Norwegians or the whatever-the-hell-is-haggis-chewing Scottish.
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Mama squints, shakes her head and scurries on, passing one restaurant after another. Finally, we're sitting inside a Cantonese restaurant, packed with huge families, loud chattering intergenerational micro-villages. Our tiny family of three is a raft bobbing in a sea of Chinese conversations. A lone wave of English washes over from a Tourist Family, who are goggling like they've flown into Shanghai, not Seattle. Over in the corner by the fish tank, a herd of kids pounds on the aquarium, but the fish don't swim away. I want to warn those cooped-up fish, Beware of the Big Net. Since fighting is futile, I don't say a word.
Above the Mandarin and Cantonese, the clicking of chopsticks, the pouring of tea, Mama and I face off. We sit across the table from each other like two generals negotiating a delicate truce. At the far side is Abe, Switzerland in this battle of words. His dark eyes are locked on the dumbed-down English menu like he's cramming for a final tomorrow in a class I could teach: Multiple Disorders of Dysfunctional Half-Asian Families.
"You going to summer camp," Mama announces to me without looking down at her menu.
My heart stops. I can already picture the hell that my mother wants to send me to. You can bet that this is no camp with horseback riding or archery. There'll be no in-depth sessions on anything remotely cool, say multidimensional printmaking or Italian cooking. My stomach starts making worrisome gurgling noises as I recall the "accelerated learning programs" Mama made me apply to for the summer.
All I know is that I better parry back, and fast. "No, I'm going to be working. Remember, you said I had to get a job this summer."
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Score two points for me. "You don't have job."
Five points for Mama. But I recover quickly: "I've got three weeks before summer starts. And Belly-button Grandmother said that I was going to find a great job."
Shoot, Mama frowns and leans toward me. "When you out of college. No job at mall again. You spent more than earned last summer."
Ouch. Ten points for Mama. From the grim look in her eyes, I can tell she's not finished with this volley. Like always, she goes from our current fight to future doom-and-gloom in two seconds flat. "You need save money. Work hard. Go to good college. Get good job. Take care of self. No one take care of you once I gone." Her lips purse the way they do whenever she makes an oblique reference to my long-gone father, still a sour memory after thirteen years.
I make a tactical error; I hesitate when I should push back hard with a comeback.
Like the brilliant fighter that she is, Mama drops the bomb just as a stocky waiter stops at our table: "You going to math camp."
"Math camp?"
"At Stanford." Mama becomes too engrossed in ordering our dinner to embellish further. Anyway, she's won this skirmish.
While Mama's conferring with our waiter about the freshness of the pea vines, I'm steaming like braised cod. A week with geeks while my friends are funning in the sun? I deliberately torpedoed my application to math camp by asking the one teacher I was sure hated me to write the mandatory recommendation. Obviously, my torpedo was a dud. Or was it? Mr. Powell couldn't be taking revenge on me for me
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talking one too many times in his Geometry class, could he? Considering that we were studying tangents, I thought my own about maximum heel height before you approach sluttiness was an appropriate application of the concept. (Incidentally, the consensus was three inches for the optimal sexy-to-slutty ratio.)
"Bo po mo fo," mutters Abe, sneaking a peek over his menu. He's barely containing a laugh.
I choke on my jasmine tea. Suddenly I'm tripping down memory lane to the year when Mama read an article about China's enormous potential as a trade partner. Never mind that Abe was in third grade and I was in kindergarten. No matter, the two of us were going to learn Mandarin, our first baby step to financial security. While all the three-year-olds sailed through to the conversation classes, Abe bo-po-mo-fo' ed his way through the Chinese alphabet for an entire year. Mama finally realized she was just wasting her money on Abe, and he became a proud Chinese School Dropout. Unlike me, the Chinese School Drudge who had to keep going until junior high.
"What's Abe doing this summer?" I ask as soon as Mama finishes with the waiter. I figure, whatever Abe's doing, I'll do, too. After all, this is my survival, my summer, my reputation at stake.
Abe reluctantly hands over his shield of a menu to the waiter. Vulnerable to attack, but highly trained in survival tactics, Abe gives up neutrality. He cracks his knuckles the way he does before pitching a no-hit game, and blurts out, "I'm going to be so busy preparing for Harvard."
The Harvard card, I should have guessed he'd play it. Three hundred points for Abe.
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Mama nods, looking at him proudly. Bonus, twenty points.
Since the thick crimson acceptance packet was wedged in our mailbox a couple of months ago, Abe has transformed from Boy Who Wasted His Time Weight Lifting to the Pride of the Potluck Party. For once, Abe is the kid all other Asian parents compare their children to. I mean, why else is Mama so thrilled to host the upcoming potluck party? Abe's given her a free pass for the next century to boast, brag, and generally rub his brilliance in the envious faces of her so-called friends.
"Like what?" I demand. "What do you have to 'prepare'?" Abe shoots me a dirty look.
"I've got to pack my room, and I've got a job," Abe, the perfect eldest son, responds.
Presto-chango! Witness another magical transformation, care of Harvard. Suddenly, being a lifeguard trumps tutoring for big bucks like he did last summer.
"You meet some nice girls," says Mama to me, wiping her chopsticks on the paper napkin before arranging them straight on her plate. "And boys."
I have a reasonable handle on English, can speak Taiwanese as well as a preschooler and could find my way around in Spain. My grasp of Mandarin has faded to the first four letters of the alphabet, "thank you," "this is delicious," and "you are a bad daughter." But I am absolutely fluent in Mama-ese: a "nice" boy means he's Taiwanese.
Not Japanese.
Not Korean.
Not even gua-shing lan -- those Nationalist Chinese who fled the mainland and overran Mama's beloved Taiwan some fifty years ago.
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And certainly not white. Having two half-Asian kids obviously hasn't made up for the great regret in Ho Mei-Li's life: marrying that yang gweilo. Well, what do you know? Two more Chinese words I remember. How can I forget such an appropriate term to describe my father -- the white foreigner ghost whose absence haunts our lives?
"Great, I get to date geeks," I mutter.
"Not date!" Mama shakes her head emphatically. "It take long time know someone. Find Good One first. Then be friends long time. Then marry."
Subtext: don't pick a Bad One the way Mama did.
I check my watch. At that second, the only Good One I want, Mark, is probably slow dancing with his date, the most beautiful, blond junior varsity cheerleader in Lincoln High history. That thought mummifies my heart, wrapping it in endless layers of wanting but not having.
I don't need to go to summer math camp to add one plus one. One: Mama must be so rattled by Belly-button Grandmother's prediction that I'm going to end up with a white guy that she's pushing me to fish for a nice Taiwanese boy. Plus one: said Taiwanese fishing hellhole is math camp at Stanford. Equals: I am so screwed.
Negative infinity points for me.
"Oh, dis-GUST-ing!"
For a split second, I think I've yelled out loud. But no, it's Teenage Tourist Girl leaping out of her chair. Glowering, the waiter holds a bucket before her table. A fishtail flops over the brim, and Mom Tourist joins in with a shriek. The waiter stalks off, his face tight because how would you like to be part of some strangers' anecdote for the next twenty-five years? Look! They actually bring
you a live fish! Can you imagine that?
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The same waiter hauls a bucket to our table, glaring like he's practically daring me to make a scene, too. But it's not me the waiter should be worried about. Mama nods fine to him and our netted fish, and turns her eyes back to me.
"I don't want to go," I say feebly, knowing it's futile to fight The Big Net that is my math summer camp.
Mama glowers at me. Oh, no, here we go again...
And she bites out the dreaded words: "You have it so easy."
The Mama Lecture Series Lecture 1: You Have It So Easy
Greetings and welcome to The Mama Lecture Series, brought to you by the first-generation Mamas who left the Old Country for Brand-New America. But first, a message from our proud sponsors. While audience participation, such as talking back, is forbidden, tears of guilt and effusive apologies are more than welcome. Please be advised that there is no need for copious note-taking. These lectures are freely given at every possible opportunity. And we do mean, Every. Possible. Opportunity. Thank you so much and enjoy the show.
"You have it so easy," Mama repeats, jabbing her chopsticks in the air at me with each point she makes, not caring that her voice is escalating or that everyone in the restaurant is watching. "Whenever you want something, you hold your hand out. You need a new book? I give it to you." Jab. "You need some new pants. I give it to you." Poke on the table. "You need, you need. When I was little, we so poor even though my father was dentist. But who could pay him? Not with money." A couple of raps on her empty plate. "Maybe a
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little rice. Or a chicken. We were so poor sometimes my mother grind up cockroaches for us to eat."
Nothing but the truth: (and a few white lies) Page 1
